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Ontario’s retirement home laws don’t go far enough: Editorial

Ontario legislation that protects retirement home residents omitted rules that protect the people whose homes are shut down due to bad care.

The Star’s Dale Brazao, right, went undercover in 2010 to expose the poor conditions at Toronto's In Touch Retirement home. (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Sun., Nov. 24, 2013

It’s been three long years since Star reporter Dale Brazao went undercover and exposed the neglect and filth of Toronto’s In Touch Retirement home. It was a shocking expose that detailed unbearable conditions for impoverished seniors.

Tenants were left in dirty diapers. A lack of toilet paper in washrooms forced them to use their hands. Food was cheap and staff, however caring, was not trained to provide necessary medical care. The home was unfit.

That was in the fall of 2010 and the Ontario government had just started working on legislation that would — finally — regulate retirement homes. Now that the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority exists to oversee Ontario’s 677 residences, inspectors have quite properly removed In Touch’s operating license for problems similar to those found by the Star. That’s the good news — the system is working.

Unfortunately, as Brazao now reports, the new legislation that was supposed to protect seniors in retirement homes doesn’t go far enough. Once a retirement home loses its operating license (after the appeal process is exhausted) there is no requirement for an orderly transfer of residents to new and appropriate housing. If good, affordable homes actually exist.

As the authority’s registrar, Mary Beth Valentine, says, “There is a clear problem with the legislation in that it does not require (follow-up) and it does put us in a more difficult situation.” She’s right. The Ontario government must amend the legislation to protect the future of residents whose homes are forcibly shut down.

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Valentine says the authority is working with local community care access centres to find new homes for In Touch residents. That’s good.

But changes to the act are desperately needed to entrench proper follow-up, and not rely on acts of kindness. Indeed, many of Ontario’s independent retirement homes take in low-income tenants. Since they make up the majority of Ontario retirement homes, it’s inevitable that inspectors will be forced to shut down other bad operators. Without the requirement of help, the elderly poor will end up in dire straits.

Indeed, in its decision against In Touch’s Elaine Lindo, the authority’s tribunal adjudicator made the point clearly: “There appears to be a gap in the Act that has the potential to leave the residents of In Touch Retirement unprotected.” The law, vice-chair Laurie Sanford noted, is “silent on how the residents are to be cared for.” That’s an alarming observation.

The government promised its new laws would deliver the necessary heft to truly protect elderly retirement home residents. An omission like this is inexcusable. Fix it now.

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